SHADES OF BLACK: RÄUM, VITRAIL, THYSIA, LUX SINE LUMINE, ORDALIE, KAIVS, MALICIOUS, LESATH

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Feb 122023
 

Obviously, I had time to pull together a lot of music for this Sunday’s column. I pushed at the usual boundaries by including bands that wouldn’t get a black metal label, but in different ways they’re close enough to blur the borders.

I ordered these seven offerings to create pendulum swings. One of them happens when you reach Lux Sine Lumine, and another happens at the end, with Lesath. In between those two are firestorms. I also thought the flow of the first three worked well, but you’ll be the judge of that.

 

RÄUM (Belgium)

Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions tell us that Räum was founded in Liege, Belgium during the first pandemic year, and perhaps they were influenced by those times. On the debut record’s Bandcamp page you’ll find this description of the music on these four tracks:

“It reveals the vacuity and the auto-destructive nature of the human soul, leading to an endless movement of rise and fall. Like a demon, it needs to burn our world to the ground to [be[ reborn again.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FVNERALS, WALLOWING, MORTE FRANCE, FAGUS, SKOGNATT, AHASVER

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Feb 052023
 

I hope this Sunday is treating you well. Or maybe you’re landing here on Monday… or Tuesday… or (heaven forfend) on Hump Day (what a lot of time those people have been wasting).

My Sunday is off to a slow start, thanks for asking. I had a riot of a Saturday night. Splattered on the couch with the cats, binge-watching a fantastic series I don’t need to name (it was Slow Horses) until way late. So I was late to rise and feeling very groggy. But there’s nothing like plunging into a lake of black and black-adjacent metal (sometimes only barely black-adjacent) to kick-start your heart. Here’s what I surfaced with today: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: TULUS, LOTAN, ARNAUT PAVLE, ANARETA, NATTSJÄL, ANHAGUAMA

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Jan 222023
 


Tulus – photo by Morten Syreng

Well I slept late again today. But unlike yesterday it wasn’t really a luxury this time. Did some partying last night and didn’t succumb to sleep until after midnight, so the sleeping late was just an effort to be barely functional today, with not a lot of hours of rest to show for it. The day is now pretty far along, and there are NFL playoff games rapidly approaching, so I’ll have to cut back on some of my own words here and there (I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth).

Prepare for a very twisty and turny trip that sometimes stretches the limits of this column’s usual focus in unusual ways.

TULUS (Norway)

From 1993 through 1999 this Norwegian group released three demos and three full-length albums, after which Tulus became dormant. Two of its members (Sarke and Blodstrup) went on to form Khold and recorded six albums under that name from 2001 through 2014 (the last of which in that period was Til endes).

When Khold temporarily went on hold in 2006, Sarke and Blodstrup revived Tulus and released Biography Obscene in 2007, as well as Olm og bitter in 2012, even after Khold itself had been resurrected. They were joined in both Khold and Tulus by bassist Crowbel. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BLAZE OF SORROW, WOTHROSCH, WICKED WEIRD

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Jan 152023
 


Blaze of Sorrow (Peter)

I forced open my sleep-crusted eyes and struggled to focus on the bed-side clock. Sluggish math told me I’d been asleep for 8 hours. Should be enough, I thought. But I couldn’t move, like someone had anesthetically severed my spine at the neck while I was out (but was instead the result of football-related alcohol poisoning). Before I could process any more thoughts I was asleep again. The next time I opened my eyes was 3 hours later, and then I didn’t have a choice. It was either climb out of the tangled covers or wet the bed.

As I begin writing this now, the clock says 9:30 a.m., and I haven’t picked a single thing for this column. The temptation to forget the whole thing is strong, but so is the inexplicable compulsion to let no day go by without making some recommendation for people who visit here. So here are just a few before my morning is completely gone. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SLEGEST, MAJESTIES, HØSTSOL, DEVISER, ONTBORG, HIVERLUCIDE, VĖLIŲ NAMAI

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Jan 082023
 


Slegest

I didn’t put together the usual Saturday roundup of new songs and videos yesterday. Partly this was because I got a late start on the day, but also because I wanted to spend more time figuring out what to include in the rollout of our 2022 Most Infectious Song list. I made good progress there, with enough choices to fill segments every day during the coming week. I think they’ll provide more reminders of what a great year for metal 2022 was.

But now on to the task at hand. The collection I assembled for today explains why I chose the name “Shades of Black” for this column too many years ago for me to remember, because most of these songs hover just on the outskirts of the black metal soundscape. They wouldn’t sound the way they do without that influence, but they’re built around other significant interests too. However, I’ve balanced those with a pair of songs near the middle that dive deep back into black metal traditions of yesteryear.

This collection is also more like the kind of “Seen and Heard” roundups that I failed to do yesterday, in that all the songs are advance tracks from forthcoming albums rather than complete new releases (even though one of those advance tracks is 20 minutes long). And I think you’ll find all the songs quite infectious — until you get to the closing pair. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK 1/1/23: LEIPA, KRINGA, BESNA, SONNEILLON, INFERNAL DIATRIBE

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Jan 012023
 

Well goddamn it’s a new year. I hope this finds you alive and well, and not in a morgue, a jail, or a hospital ward as a result of whatever you did last night.

My only new year’s resolution is to keep breathing, though that’s not really a resolution because I have no control over it, the breathing or the ceasing to breathe. Que sera, sera. However, I do have a resolution to suggest that you adopt, which is to let no day go by without coming here to have your head rattled and ruined. (Maybe committing to engage in more acts of kindness and caring toward others wouldn’t be a bad idea either, and let some of the music do the hating for us.)

It’s a fitting coincidence that the first day of 2023 falls on a Sunday, allowing me to welcome the new year at NCS by beginning to char it to a crisp, building on whatever fires were started with gunpowder last night. Fitting, because one could argue there is no realistic hope that 2023 will be better than 2022. People will continue being shitty to each other, the Earth will continue taking revenge for the pomposity, the greed, and the negligence of humankind, and the temptation to just hunker down in a bunker for self-preservation will be strong.

On the other hand, some things will still make life worth living, even if the point of existence remains obscure, and one of those is the enjoyment of art in all its forms, even the kind of art that wants to turn the world black. Examples follow. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LUMEN AD MORTEM, NUNKTHUL, VURVARAT, NANSARUNAI, KEXELÜR

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Dec 272022
 


Lumen Ad Mortem

On THAT HOLIDAY last Sunday I was going to wish everyone good tidings of joy, because joy is so often impoverished in this age, but the burden of laziness weighed me down as I thought it might. I was looking forward to darkening that holiday with un-joyful music via this column. It’s not as satisfying to darken National Fruitcake Day (yes, today is National Fruitcake Day here in the U.S.), but I’ll take what I can get.

As I was making my way through music I thought might make good fodder for this column I unexpectedly severed a certain musical vein, one that spurted its black blood through the first four selections below. You’ll need cotton wads to sop the blood from your lacerated ears, though no sponge will absorb the terrors and torments of these deleterious but captivating anthems to all that is wrong. They seem to exclaim damnation to trends, quite comfortable in their desolate burning castles first built in by-gone ages of black metal, and let’s hoist a chalice of blood to their devotion, shall we?

And do gird your loins, because there is A LOT of music here, straight up through the EP that ends the collection with what might be the maddest songs of all. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SARPA, GRÁ, JOURS PÂLES, EMPYREAN VESSEL, STELLAR DESCENT

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Dec 042022
 


Sarpa

The usual Sunday routine, waking up and not preparing for church, like some unfathomable number of people around the world do, but instead knowing that I’ll spend the next couple of hours listening and re-listening to nothing but variants of black metal, including the Satan-worshiping, Christ-hating variants.

It’s a habit I’m quite comfortable with, at least when I get a decent Saturday-night sleep and keep the Saturday-night drinking at a moderate level. The task of picking and choosing from what I’ve heard creates an inner tension I could do without, but it’s the need to choose that drives the listening. I wouldn’t be making choices if I weren’t writing this thing, and if I weren’t writing this thing I doubt I’d be spending Sunday mornings listening to black metal.

But I’d probably just be making other choices, and less pleasurable ones — wash the dishes? do a load of laundry? pay some nagging bills? heat up the leftover pizza or eat it cold? dig deeper into why 1,700 seals have been found dead on Russia’s Caspian coast?

Nah, I don’t want to make those choices. I made these instead: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VIDMERSHIY SHMAT, OBRIJ, FROSTNATT, ENGE STORE, FUNEBRE, ULVIK, VESPERWYND, NARRENWIND, GROHOT

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Nov 272022
 


Vidmershiy Shmat

My NCS time can be captured by this formula:  NCS = 24 – [FDJ + FAF + SBBS + MAE], where 24 is the number of hours in the day (a constant I haven’t figured out how to extend), FDJ is Fucking Day Job, FAF is Family and Friends, SBBS is Sleep, Bathroom Breaks, and Smoking, and MAE is Meteors and Earthquakes.

EAD (Eating and Drinking) doesn’t enter into it because I can do those things at the computer. So far, the value of MAE has been Zero. I might have made a place for DDD (Disease, Dismemberment, and Death), which would leave the calculated NCS time at Zero, but hope springs eternal!

The most consequential variable (so far) is FDJ. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore it, as I sometimes do with FAF, and it’s difficult to minimize the time required, as I sometimes do with SBBS. But during this long Thanksgiving holiday it has left me alone, and that’s why I finished two big roundups on Friday and Saturday, and now a third one here. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AZAGHAL, FORTÍÐ, GAROTA, SKÁLD, UNHOLY VAMPYRIC SLAUGHTER SECT, VIOLET COLD

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Nov 202022
 

My head is clearer today than it was yesterday morning, but this column, although not exactly short, is still shorter than I’d like due to a planned mid-morning rendezvous with friends. Because time is racing away, I’ll cut this introduction off at the knees and just forewarn you that the word of the day is “whiplash”.

AZAGHAL (Finland)

As these blasphemous and terrorizing Fiuns approach the quarter-century mark in their career they’ve readied a new album named Alttarimme on Luista Tehty (“our altar is made of bone”), and the first advance song from it is the one I’ve chosen as a beginning today. It turns out to be a multi-faceted piece of music, and one that passes almost too quickly. Continue reading »

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